This week: Border deal remains elusive as shutdown looms

Lawmakers are struggling to lock down an agreement on President Trump’s border wall days ahead of the deadline to prevent a partial government shutdown.

Congress has until Feb. 15 to get an agreement to Trump’s desk to fund approximately a quarter of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

But talks appeared to unravel over the weekend with the group of 17 lawmakers tasked with finding an agreement stuck on two key points of contention: the amount of funding for the US.-Mexico border wall and the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention beds.

{mosads}Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that negotiations are “stalled” and predicted a “50-50” chance of reaching an agreement.

“We’re hoping we can get there. But we’ve got to get fluid again. We got to start movement,” Shelby said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump also weighed in suggesting that Democratic leadership was interfering in the negotiations.

“The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally. Not only are they unwilling to give dollars for the obviously needed Wall (they overrode recommendations of Border Patrol experts), but they don’t even want to take murderers into custody! What’s going on?.” Trump said in a separate tweet.

Though lawmakers have until Friday, they viewed Monday as an unofficial deadline if they were going to get a deal to Trump’s desk without skipping over procedural hurdles in the House, including a 72-hour rule that requires legislation be released three days before it receives a vote on the floor.

Without an agreement, lawmakers will need to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to avoid a second funding lapse starting on Saturday. White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney also suggested that if Trump can’t get what the administration views as an acceptable level of funding from the conference committee that the White House could try to shuffle around money already approved by Congress.

“We’ll take as much money as you can give us and then we will go off and find the money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier. But this is going to get built with or without Congress,” Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump has not ruled out declaring a national emergency to construct the U.S.-Mexico border wall despite heavy pushback from Republican members of Congress. Mulvaney also floated on Sunday that they could request to reprogram money, though that requires sign off from Congress.

“A government shutdown is technically still on the table,” he added.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) blasted Mulvaney’s remarks saying another shutdown isn’t out of the realm of possibility  if Congress doesn’t strike a deal the president is willing to support.

“I just came back from the visiting border this weekend and can attest that what we need is not a medieval wall but twenty-first century technology, port infrastructure, additional trained personnel, and humanitarian assistance,” he said in a statement.

Trump is expected to head to El Paso, Texas, on Monday to hold a rally with supporters, where he’ll likely reiterate his call to build the wall and fulfill one of his key campaign pledges.  

The stalemate is a u-turn from late last week when senators involved in the negotiations thought a deal could be reached over the weekend.

Negotiators had narrowed the divide on funding for physical barriers along the border to between $1.3 billion to roughly $2 billion, though lawmakers have not yet settled on the exact dollar amount or what type of barriers would be in the agreement.

Democrats acknowledged on Sunday that they had proposed a cap on the number of ICE detention beds, arguing it would force the Trump administration to focus on “serious criminals” and was in line with numbers from the Obama administration.

“The Trump Admin has been tearing communities apart with its cruel immigration policies. A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump Admin to prioritize deportation for criminals and people posing real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants contributing to our country,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard said in a tweet.

Yemen

The House is slated to take up a measure — spearheaded by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — that would require troops that were not approved by Congress to be removed from hostilities in Yemen with the exceptions of fighting terrorism.

“Today the House Foreign Affairs Committee took us one step closer to passing the first war powers resolution out of both chambers in the history of the United States Congress,” Khanna said in a statement late last week.

“… More than 14 million Yemenis—half the country—are on the brink of famine, and at least 85,000 children have already died from hunger and disease as a result of the war. Let’s end American complicity in the atrocities in Yemen.”

Under the joint resolution, armed forces would be required to be removed from the areas within 30 days of enactment unless Congress and the president agree upon a later date or if a declaration of war is enacted.

The legislation is expected to pass both chambers, in a significant break with Trump over the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. The upper chamber passed the measure last year, but the Republican-controlled House did not bring the resolution to the floor after stripping it of its privileged status during the 115th Congress.

Republicans have picked up two seats in the Senate. But Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who is co-sponsoring the resolution, predicted they could pick up GOP support given lingering frustration with the U.S.-Saudi relationship on Capitol Hill.

“I think there were a number of Republicans who wanted to support in December, but didn’t because they thought the Saudis were going to start behaving less badly,” Murphy said. “There’s no indication that the Saudis are behaving less badly, and thus I think there were some Republicans who were on the fence in December who may be with us now.”

Lands package

The Senate is set to wrap up work this week on a federal lands package.

The legislation reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It also includes provisions aimed at increasing recreational access to federal land, and has dozens of specific local provisions to add to national parks and other land holdings.

The Senate is expected to vote to wrap up debate on the bill on Monday evening. The chamber could also vote on an amendment from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to limit to prevent a president from creating or expanding national monuments without state approval in Utah.

The vote on Lee’s amendment comes after he and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked the package from quickly passing last year because of the Antiquities Act fight.

Lee, speaking on the Senate floor in late December, said he wanted two words “for Utah” to be included in the Antiquities Act, which would prevent a president from creating or expanding national monuments without state approval in Utah.

“This bill creates 1.3 million acres of wilderness, about half of which is in my state,” Lee argued, referring to the lands package. “Coming from a state where two-thirds of the land is owned by the federal government, where we can’t do anything without leave from the federal government this hurts.”

Barr

The Senate is poised to turn to William Barr’s attorney general nomination after it wraps up the lands package.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) teed up a procedural vote on Barr for as soon as this week.

Barr appears to be on a glide path to confirmation after easily clearing the Judiciary Committee along a party-line vote on Thursday.

Democrats, who have 47 seats on their own, face an uphill climb if they are going to block Barr’s nomination on the Senate floor.

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) became the first Democrat to announce he would support Barr’s nomination, saying he believes Barr will “exercise independent judgment and uphold the best interests of the Department of Justice.”

With Jones’s flip, Democrats would need to win over at least five Republicans and keep the rest of their caucus united. Potential swing votes, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), haven’t yet said how they will vote.

Barr previously served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, but his current nomination ran into controversy over an unsolicited memo he sent to the White House. Barr, in the memo, described Mueller’s probe as based on a “fatally misconceived” theory and would do “lasting damage” to the presidency.

Barr told senators during his confirmation hearing last month that he would let Mueller finish his investigation, that Trump would not be allowed to “correct” his final report and that he make Mueller’s findings public in accordance with the law.

Dingell

The House canceled votes for Feb. 12 to allow members to attend the funeral of former Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.). Dingell, the former dean of the House and longest-serving member in the lower chamber, died following a battle with cancer at the age of 92 on Thursday.